Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by ClayM 3397 days ago
I throw real life problems I've run into (and fixed!) at people and ask them to give me things they would do to troubleshoot, and compare it to what I did. Always nice when somebody suggests something new.

I also ask 10,000 foot questions. "Say you're wanting to build a new app that behaves like Instagram. What's your hosting platform, your technology stack, and explain why?".
2 comments
rodgerd 3397 days ago
> I throw real life problems I've run into (and fixed!) at people and ask them to give me things they would do to troubleshoot

Yes. How does the person think and work? I've interviewed ops folks who are technical gurus whose walked through a problem with me and pulled up with "well, in that case the server is fine and it's not my problem". They can work somewhere else, I don't care how good they are at "making the server work".

I've also interviewed ops people who are all "well, if performance in production has degraded I want to sit down with the source control tools for your config management system and apps and work through the changesets with the devs and work out where we should start looking." I don't give a fuck if that gal needs to google some of the answers to the problems she finds, she's got what I want.

link
ThrowawayR2 3397 days ago
>I also ask 10,000 foot questions. "Say you're wanting to build a new app that behaves like Instagram. What's your hosting platform, your technology stack, and explain why?".

Please forgive the uncomfortable question but isn't that a tacit admission that many developers' role consists of simply gluing together libraries and frameworks built by better engineers who actually do know how fundamental algorithms, etc. work?

link
ClayM 3397 days ago
"simply" indicates you've never tried to stand up a fairly recent javascript stack :D

that being said, you're not wrong. Maybe 5% (maybe less) of the guys out there are smart enough to build libraries and frameworks. the next 45% of the guys out there are smart enough to see all the pieces and figure out how to fit them together.

the other 50% understand syntax and can write code, but aren't capable of any sort of bigger picture stuff.

and if my recent interviews are any indication, the split outside of silicon valley is more like 2/18/80.

Shoot, I'm not in that "let's build brilliant frameworks" crew. I don't think I am at least. Haven't really tried :D

link